Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019

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I learned through the news that Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on May 2nd this year. It's Israel's commemoration day for around 6 million European Jews who perished through the systematic genocide committed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. As I read the news coverage about the Holocaust commemoration, I remembered one Friday afternoon when I was in San Francisco. I happened to have ventured past the Legion of Honour and walked into the Holocaust Memorial. Unlike other memorials which aimed to show the might of U.S. heroes and leaders, the Holocaust Memorial was barely decorated. It was just heralded by a block of stone with a label on it.


Beyond the memorial's sign, I realised that I was overlooking a sculpture called "The Survivor". The George Segal artwork depicted the last man standing inside a concentration camp. Ten persons were already dead behind him. Some say that the man in the middle of the dead represents Jesus and the rest of the bodies, radiating from the central figure, formed the shape of a star.


It's a depressing and confrontational sculpture, definitely... a stark reminder of the sufferings experienced by victims of systematic genocide. On the other hand, "The Survivor" also evokes hope. As the survivor gazes past the prison and to the bay and the distant mountains, I hoped that he would escaped from the camp and finds reason to move on, to thrive.

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